Forms for an ocean

Edited by Susan M. Schultz

Poems by Jen Coleman

Below the thunder horse oil rig, a mile below, a sea serpent is an Oarfish never seen by human eyes, an oarfish far between 250 thousand god-given liberties and the surface. An oarfish, the largest of the deep mesopelagic sea, undulates, fins splayed in a molasses current.

Did Poseidon see an oarfish? Did he wear a two ton top hat and did he leave it on the sea bed? And did Poseidon set fire to his deepwater ice, set fire to his methane slush and set his robots to thread a straw to suck diamond shaped impostors through the sea bed to quench the thirsty Atlantis?

Atlantis the continent and the liftoff and the Saturn island ringed with sea. Atlantis the plentiful, Atlantis the ship Atlantis the massive apparatus the earthworm tunneling through orbit circling the planet singing to the sea Atlantis singing to the newborn star shaking off the cloud of its birth, leaving a truly empty hole never seen in the universe a truly empty hole in the sea of the sky

Did Poseidon squeeze off the surge of a rogue well with a cork of experience? Did Poseidon have limits of experience on the sea bottom, the god-given sea bottom, full of liberties?

Did Poseidon have a cozy relationship with the minerals management service? Did Poseidon of the high-sea phase-changes change phases instead, declaring Aquaman a ridiculous spectacle, declaring a worst-case scenario, declaring himself angry and sickened, did he pull a monotheistic cloak about his head?

Atlantis with six million tons of blastoff in a final orbit in a single violent gesture sinks into the horizon, sinks into the obscurity of the land of the oarfish.

Psalm for Dogs and Sorcerers

Let the sea colored eels teem with urchins and worms, and let the orangutan with mad mouthing tongue fly above a slurry of swifts in the sunset and into a clutch of centipede eggs curled coy in the middens of the whitebark cones come to feed the Douglas squirrels that feed the big brown grizzly all the way down to Idaho and let a rat be a short eared bunny or just a rat in a short eared universe and the bicyclists after their chicken catching kind swell their hearts too and feed the river cats near the railroad track and let there be future farmers among the pigs and sheared Shropshire sheep and kind of a baby cow and miniature rams and let all be fair in the hay and sawdust and in a serious storm of being aliveness teem, according to a kind, and to every sea horse a black tongue according to its kind and good, wild medflies after their kinds, sassy potatoes with corn dogs and buttermilk after their kinds and all koalas that clutch according to their kinds.

And one kind hungers after another kind in accordance with past nature, another kind takes after yet another kind in kind. According to creatures, this is kind of a kindness time after time.

Census of the Fishes

The time is ripe.

Humans must share with marine mammals and sea birds squid, krill,

and one quintillian copepods, the value of knowledge for its inherent interest:

A Census of the Fishes.

A serious Census of the fishes the prowfish the lungfish the glassfish the blind sharks the blue eyes the smelt

onesided livebearers and the white eye the jawless fishes, pinnipends, count up the deep sea sculpins, snail and limpet

the blenny, the bonnetmouths and bonytongues count the catsharks and false catsharks, brotulas and false brotulas, Count the lumpsuckers stuck fast to rocks

the dreamers and dottybacks, the gulpers and gunnels the hingemouths and garfish with green bones noodlefish, icefish, gibberfish and gar

Susan M. Schultz’s feature on Pacific poetries brings together “forms for an ocean”: work that meets and exceeds the notions of containment and fathoming that accompany any effort at identifying a region for poetry. Essays and poems are collected here along with a gallery of visual works by Hawai’i artists.